by Hope Tarr
Rourke broke in upon his thoughts by saying, “I’ve to go into Edinburgh the day after next for the quarterly shareholders meeting. I canna trust that blasted blackguard chairman of the board, Seamus Craig, not to stage a coup. The devil never ceases to try and thwart me, though the return on investments for the new tunnel has seen profit doubling over the past quarter.”
Blast, but the quarterly stockholders meeting had escaped Ralph’s mind entirely even though he’d been the one to draft the memorandum to the board members the week before. But then since Bea’s arrival, his steel trap of a brain had turned sievelike, at least when it came to any matter not expressly concerned with his lovely pupil. Their latest lesson had launched in the wee hours of that morning, and he caught himself wondering how she might be getting on.
“What time do we leave?” Ralph asked.
Rourke concentrated on rearranging the soft pink blanket about the baby. “I thought you might bide here.”
“You won’t need me at the meeting?” Ralph asked, careful to conceal his elation.
Normally he might take offense at being so easily dismissed, worry even that it was some reflection on his work performance, which admittedly had been less than stellar of late. But under the circumstances, the possibility that he might stay behind and finish out the week with Beatrice was veritable music to his ears.
Rourke shrugged. “I can manage for one day, I suppose. Besides, I don’t like to leave my Katie Girl alone when she’s breeding.”
A week earlier, Ralph would have been hard-pressed not to point out that Kate would hardly find herself alone in a household that now numbered nearly fifty. But given the circumstances, why look a gift horse in the mouth?
“If you’re quite certain…”
“I am, so it’s settled, aye?” Rourke asked though from Ralph’s experience of his friend turned employer, it was more statement than question.
Ralph nodded. “Yes, it’s settled.”
Seemingly satisfied, Rourke leaned over the crib and commenced cooing at the baby.
Turning toward the door, Ralph allowed he’d rarely felt more unsettled in all his days.
“BEA-BEA, YOU SEEM so very fidgety,” Kate remarked that same afternoon, pausing in her otherwise enthusiastic presentation of her latest renovation plans, the last of the series of the Edinburgh architect’s drawings unfurled atop her desk. “I venture to say you’ve not heard a word I’ve said this past hour.” She let out a huff, inadvertently rousing Toby snoozing beneath the desk.
Shifting in her seat, Bea feared her sister wasn’t far from the mark, but she scoured her distracted brain all the same. “You had my full attention up to the point of replacing the hip baths with built-in copper-cast bathing tubs. A dial for hot and cold running water as well as waste sounds very grand, very modern. I’m quite certain the housemaids currently charged with carrying heated water upstairs in those heavy brass cans will forever bless your name. When it comes to the conversion from gas to electricity, though, I’m afraid you’ve quite lost me.”
“No matter.” Looking marginally mollified, Kate rolled up the plan and replaced it in its hollow tube. “Is anything the matter?
Bea shrugged, and then shivered at the reaction even that slight motion wrought. “It must be wedding jitters,” she said, falling back on the apparently failsafe excuse for all imminent brides.
Poor Mr. Billingsby could not begin to fathom the torrent of sexual craving his ineptitude had released. At this rate, she would be the most sexually knowledgeable bride of her set. The other night, she had been beyond bad. Certainly she had not entertained such scandalous and exotic notions during her doomed attempt with Mr. Billingsby, whose person it was a trial to touch. But with Ralph she found she yearned to do scandalous, exotic things. She wanted to be wicked with him, for him, and not only because the lessons might have some future matrimonial use. She wanted to touch, taste and gaze upon Ralph and be touched, tasted and gazed upon by him for no other reason than because doing so gave her pleasure.
His latest lesson, which had occurred that morning, had involved gifting her with a pair of marble-size metal-weighted balls, which he’d presented in a green baize-lined case. A long, thin gold chain strung the orbs together. Ben-Wa balls he’d called them, a device for eliciting desire that dated back to the ancient Orient. Bea had never heard of such a thing but once she realized their purpose, she’d been curious—very well, eager—to try them.
Bea quickly learned the balls didn’t induce sexual climax but rather a slow-burning state of relentless arousal. Gravity proved to be both friend and foe. The slightest movement of her hips or legs increased the teasing friction. When Kate suggested a brisk walk outside to view the winter garden she’d put in, Bea had nearly choked on a mouthful of morning chocolate. Sitting in the nursery rocking chair had nearly been her undoing. She’d already excused herself to her room to masturbate on three separate occasions and it was not yet teatime. Short of pulling on the chain and removing the blasted balls, which her tutor expressly forbade, she had little choice but to suffer the relentless stirrings in silence and count out the hours until evening.
“Perhaps a walk would help,” Kate said yet again and glanced beneath the desk to where the dog lay snoring on his side. “Toby could use the exercise.”
Bea held back a groan. She pushed back from the table and all but leaped from her seat. “Actually I believe a good book from your finely stocked library may be just the antidote I seek.”
AFTER LEAVING KATE, Bea set her stride toward her brother-in-law’s study, which set adjacent to the library. She needed Ralph. She needed him quite desperately. The desire inside her was building toward implosion. Seeking him out during the day was a direct violation of their agreement. And yet at the moment, Bea didn’t care, not a jot. She was sick to death of rules, even the ones she’d helped to make—especially those.
She came upon her brother-in-law’s study, a familiar destination by now. Blast but the door was closed. Pressing a flushed ear to the paneling, she discerned Ralph’s voice and then Rourke’s in answer. Judging from the timbre of their tones, they sounded to be in the thick of a project. Then again, that shouldn’t surprise her. It was, after all, the middle of the workday.
Bea gathered her courage, raised a trembling fist, and knocked. After a moment’s pause, Rourke called for her to enter.
Weak-kneed, she stepped inside. Rourke sat behind his desk, a leather-bound ledger lying open and his spectacles sliding down his broken bridge of nose. Ralph sat at the second desk, his cravat loosened and his jacket hanging over the chair back. A small, black bound notebook lay open before him, and he had a fountain pen tucked behind one ear.
Both men pulled back their chairs and stood as she entered. Dividing her gaze between them, Bea felt her palms begin to perspire. Until now her hands had been one of the few parts of her body she had maintained some control over.
“I am so sorry to disturb you.” It seemed she did little but apologize these days.
Rourke fixed her with a worried look. “Is ought amiss? Kate, Lucy—”
“Kate is pouring over the latest architect’s drawings and Lucy is napping in her nursery.”
Distracted though she was, it still warmed her to see just how very much Rourke cared for the females in his life. Her sister and niece were everything to him. Then unlike Ralph, her brother-in-law didn’t eat little girls for breakfast or big ones, either. Patrick O’Rourke had begun life as a homeless rogue as had Ralph, but he’d taken to the civilizing pleasures of home and hearth with astonishing ease. Ralph, in contrast, could scarcely bring himself to sit through a family dinner. He didn’t bother to hide that he found Lucy’s crying to be a bother. Even in the throes of her very real, very physical frustration, Bea conceded that her heart’s sudden fisting hadn’t to do with Ben-Wa balls or dildos or the delicious things to be done with silk scarves. It had to do with babies—all the blue-and hazel-eyed, blond-and sandy-haired, beautiful babies she and Ralph woul
d never ever have.
Voice shaking, she said, “I crave a word with Ralph.” For the first time since entering, she dared to look at her tutor head-on.
Ralph returned her gaze, game face on. “Can it wait, milady? I am in the midst of taking down a letter.”
Bea gritted her teeth. He knew damn well why she’d come, the level of her urgency, the rawness of her need. Her brother-in-law, however, looked to be wholly in the dark, and she meant to keep him that way. Still, she’d never had much talent for lying. Growing up, Kate had always seen through her fibs straightaway. But at the moment she was altogether too hot, too wet and too consumed by desperate desire to back down.
“I’m afraid it is urgent,” she said sharply. Staring into his expressionless hazel eyes, she suddenly saw just how good at lying he could be. “I need you…to telephone in a telegram for me, an urgent telegram to do with the wedding.” Unnerved, she pivoted back to her brother-in-law. “I must tell Aunt Lavinia that Brussels lace will never do. If I do not intercept her before she puts in her order with the dressmaker, it will be too late,” she added, inwardly wincing at what a silly goose she must sound.
She saw Rourke catch Ralph’s eye and mouth the word brides accompanied by a rolling of his eyes. Composing himself, he turned back to Bea. “Seeing as your purpose is so verra urgent, I suppose I can spare him.” He closed the large leather-bound ledger lying open on his desk. “Go on, Sylvester, we can take up this beastly business later.”
Ralph’s gaze brushed over her, and the heat coiled at her core unfurled and shot straight to her toes. “If you’re certain,” he said to Rourke as though she weren’t in the room at all—another blow to her pride.
Rourke stooped over the desk, pushing the scattered papers into piles. “You’re not that indispensable.” He punctuated the pronouncement with a wink.
“As you wish.” Ralph turned away to collect his coat, his expertly tailored trousers stretching tautly over his slim hips and perfect ass. Wondering why he seemed so intent on torturing her, Bea licked her lips and considered that her brother-in-law could not know just how very wrong he was.
At that moment, Ralph Sylvester was as dispensable to her as air.
“Thank you,” she said and headed out into the hallway.
Ralph followed her, still taking his sweet time. Stepping out, he pulled the study door closed behind him. “The telephone is in the front hallway,” he told her, his innocent tone belied by the wicked gleam in his eye.
Bea darted her gaze down the corridor and, finding it to be empty, grabbed his coat by the lapels and pulled him to her. Grinding her aching breasts against his chest, she hissed, “Speak to you? No, I don’t wish to bloody speak to you. I wish to…”
She stopped herself. Dear God, was she truly becoming so coarse that she would behave so badly in broad daylight in her sister’s home?
He sent her an impudent smile. “You’ve only to say the word, one word, and you can have what you want. You know this and yet your stubbornness persists.”
Bea ground her back teeth together and braced herself to let go of what little remained of her pride. “Please.”
His smile broadened. He took firm hold of her elbow and steered her down the corridor. Tripping to keep pace beside him, she asked, “We aren’t… That is to say… Aren’t we going to your room?”
He turned to look at her, his mocking eyes proclaiming her the sorriest of fools. “We can go anywhere you fancy, fornicate on the dining-room table if you wish. It’s not as though I have any particular reputation to protect, but if you value yours I’d warn against sneaking into bedrooms in the middle of the day. In case you haven’t noticed, servants tend to talk.”
They came upon the staircase. Opening a small door beneath it, he all but shoved her inside.
Squinting to accustom her eyes to the darkness, Bea saw that they stood in a storage closet. The space was big enough for two but barely. Dust motes floated in the dark, still air, which smelled of cedar and must. The slanted ceiling almost scraped the tops of their heads.
Ralph pulled the door closed behind them. Turning back around, he braced his back upon the wall and slid his gaze over her. “Tell me, how are you enjoying our latest experiment? By the look of you, you’re liking it far too much.”
Staring into that cocksure smile, she doubted she’d ever hated anyone half so much. Not her father for selling Princess and thereby ending Kate’s girlhood, not Felicity Drummond for playing her for a fool and not even Mr. Billingsby for being so very clumsy and complacent that she’d been driven to…this.
Fueled by fury as much as desire, she launched herself at him. Ralph’s arms wrapped about her, whipping her about.
He pinned her with the length of him, his eyes boring into hers, his hardness thrusting into her thigh. “Tell me what you want.”
The backs of her legs bumped against something solid and seemingly immoveable. A washstand, it seemed. He lifted her atop and set her down none too gently on the marble slab, the chill seeping into her backside.
“I want you to take these bloody…balls out of me.”
He quirked a brow, all cucumber-cool reserve swathed in expert English tailoring—tailoring her hands itched to rip from his body, his perfectly sculpted, sinfully beautiful body. The same perfectly sculpted, sinfully beautiful body that could bring her pleasure and drive her to madness in equal measure, pleasure and madness such as she’d never before imagined might exist.
“Is that all?”
He pulled her to the edge and stepped up so that she was forced to spread her legs to accommodate him. “How many times must I direct you, Beatrice, to ask for what you want?” His finger stroking slow, invisible circles at the side of her knee nearly set her out of her mind. His parted lips but a whisper away, he breathed into her mouth, “Ask, simply ask.”
“I want you to make me feel better. I want you to make me come.”
He shoved her skirts up to her waist. Bea looked down and gasped. How could she have forgotten? Earlier the crotch of her bloomers had become so drenched that in desperation she’d shucked them off. Her garters and stockings banded skin that was snowy-white for all she felt afire. Her pubis was at half tilt, the curls damp with desire, her nether lips ruby-red and glistening.
Ralph’s stark gaze met hers. He laid a hand on either knee and spread her legs as wide as they would go. As if reading her mind, he dipped his head and plunged not one but two fingers inside her. Fullness flooded her. Bea fell back on her elbows with a sob, arching against his hand. She felt his warm breath strike her belly and then lower. A gentle pull and then a snapping sound announced he’d captured the tail of the chain between his teeth. Bea caught her breath. For the span of several heartbeats, she forgot all save the gnawing need.
He drew back. A triumphant laugh saw him dropping the balls into his handkerchief and then into his pocket. He bent to her again. His tongue stroked, swept and finally struck deeply inside her, raising a nexus of heat at her core and shivery gooseflesh everywhere else. Bea squirmed atop the stand. It was hot and bruising, sticky and sweet and altogether the most primal moment of her life. Beyond shame, she cinched her legs about his waist and clawed at his back, her fingernails sinking into the worsted wool. She wanted to come, but first she wanted to make him bleed.
His mouth glinting with wetness, her wetness, he looked up at her and smiled. “A lady in the parlor and a whore in the bedroom.”
Beyond words, she braced herself on her elbow and let him have his way. He did, torturing her by moving his fingers scissor style inside her, milking her into his hand, teasing her clit and bringing her to the brink of satisfaction again and yet again, always pulling back before the final moment.
Beatrice was sure she would go mad. Mayhap she was mad, for what woman in her right mind would revel in being so degraded? Ralph didn’t want a marriage with her or babies with her or anything that someone such as she viewed as being a future, a life. He was perfectly content for her to carry on with he
r marriage plans, perfectly content to let their relationship rest as tutor and pupil, all they’d ever be. As bruised as her heart felt, yet she couldn’t seem to stop from lifting her hips to that hard, thrusting hand.
She spread her thighs as wide as they would go and locked her legs about his waist. “God, I hate you. I bloody hate you,” she said, lifting against him, mingling her sweat with his, her desire with his, reveling in the knowledge that for the rest of the day he would wear her scent on his fine clothes.
“I hate you, too.” He slipped his free hand beneath her buttocks and squeezed, his fingers sliding beneath the lobes. “I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed hating a woman so very much.”
He hated her. That was something, she supposed. The desktop bored into her backside, bruising the tip of her spine, punishing the backs of her thighs. The thought of bending over him as he disciplined her with the flat of his hand had her sex quivering.
“Hate me some more,” she moaned, grabbing at his wrist, willing him to work a third and even a fourth finger inside her, longing for him to finish her with his mouth. “Please,” she added. Having finally submitted to the begging, she couldn’t seem to stop.
She punctuated the plea by lifting her bottom off the marble, thrusting upward with her hips, and slamming into his hand, a silent invitation for him to touch and taste and take her in whatever way he wished.
“You’re so wet I could work the whole of my hand inside you for all that you’re still tight as a virgin.”
She opened her eyes and met his stark gaze. Holding it, she reached down and touched the hood of the little nub that, thanks to him, she now knew was called a clitoris. “I want you to stroke and suckle me there, just there.” Beyond shame, she moved her forefinger in the little circles that over the past few days she’d found she especially liked.